Gepubliceerd in:
01-09-2011
Quality of life in Brazil: normative values for the Whoqol-bref in a southern general population sample
Gepubliceerd in: Quality of Life Research | Uitgave 7/2011
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Purpose
Normative data for WHOQOL-bref are scarce in the literature and unavailable in Latin American countries. The main objective of this study was to provide normative scores of WHOQOL-bref in a general population sample in Brazil and to describe differences in mean scores according to some socio-demographic characteristics.
Methods
WHOQOL-bref was applied to a randomly selected sample of the general population of Porto Alegre. Participants were literate people aged 20 to 64 years. The questionnaires were self-administered in the presence of an interviewer in the respondent’s home.
Results
The response rate was 68%, and the final sample contained 751 respondents (38% men, 62% women). Low quality of life was observed in the following subgroups: female gender, lower economic class, lower educational level, and the subgroup reporting a chronic medical condition. The mean scores of the WHOQOL-bref and percentiles of scores are reported as normative data for the general population.
Conclusion
Our results can be useful to researchers using the WHOQOL-bref to compare their results with normative data from a randomly selected sample of general population. Additionally, the ability of WHOQOL-bref to discriminate different population subgroups makes it an important tool to identify vulnerable groups in epidemiological surveys.